Merry July Fourth.
American’s love to remind me that this was the day a very long time ago that some guys in wigs signed a piece of paper and declared independence from the British. This is pretty much true and there is a reason American children are drilled with the idealism of it all and British schools don’t cover it in their curriculum.
British schools cover the Victorian age, the industrial revolution and the subjugation of a quarter the world’s people through colonialisation (note: 19th century). When America seceded it did so from a fledgling empire, not from tyrannical brutes in Westminster.
British kids are not taught that America seceded from Britain because the Britain of the late 18th century has little relation to the Britain of today … just as the America of today has little to do with the America of 1776.
For British kids of the new millennium, America is very much its own country and they’d be surprised to hear America was ever under British rule. The Britain of George III’s rule is unrecognisable to high-school pupils of the UK. It has no bearing. To be blunt … they, we, I don’t care what happened over two centuries ago.
Listen Up! America, you’ve always been you’re own country. America is big, its own monster, fantastic, extreme. America boasts the greats of science, technology, film and gun-making in its alumni. Recognise your nation’s brilliance, but please also recognise its shortcomings.
Instead of focusing on irrelevant and ‘pseudo-mythical’ oppressors of the past, why not consider today the active and brutal oppressors in your political system today.
America is the only Western nation in the world to execute human beings.
America has 1 in 30 adults locked up in prisons (4 times the amount of any other Western state).
America’s middle class has fled to the banality of the suburbs and hung its public school systems out to dry.
America has 50 million medically uninsured people, including 11 million children.
America has embraced the privatisation of prisons and stockholders profit from the incarceration of men, women and children.
America’s drug war is in fact a war on the lower classes, who are predominantly minority groups.
All these are connected by hard line economics and the devastating effects promote distrust and division.
I am interested in prisons primarily because how a society treats those that transgress is a telling gauge on its wider shared cultural/political landscape.
Don’t build prisons, build schools. Don’t wage wars in foreign lands, wage war on the poverty and inequalities of your major cities. This is all simple stuff said many times before.
I apologise for this inconvenient diatribe; I don’t want to piss on your parade. In fact, I wish you had more parades. America has the fewest public holidays of any Western nation. Take a break America … love a little.
And, no, I don’t hate America … I just distrust patriotism, false mythologies and the resultant complacency. If I had the chance to decry all state-pageantry and self-congratulation, I would.
Last of all, stop allowing journo and political hacks to smear Socialism as a dirty word and system. They know bugger all. Socialism means spreading love as well as wealth. It means educating kids so that they don’t steal from you a decade later. It means providing health services NOW so that individuals can support themselves for life and the state needn’t.
President Obama emailed me today, “Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us were created equal”. Start putting your tax dollars where your constitution is and propagate equality. You can call it Socialism or not, I’ll just call it love.
Prison Photography 
6 comments
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July 4, 2009 at 7:30 pm
mechanisticmoth
Great post. Way to whip out the facts… and the awesome Professor Brothers strips! Yay Neely!
July 4, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Brendan
Hear hear! Today I made time and a half at work because of those pinko socialist unions and their commie government counterparts… If I still ate meat I would grill a hot-dog for freedom but instead I’m using natural gas to warm up beans, cheese (without rennet) and tortillas…
July 4, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Nate
What a poorly written and poorly edited diatribe from a usually intelligent source. Disappointing. The Brad Neely cartoons are hilarious and should have been posted without your commentary (which perhaps gave such credence to UK high school students thoughts and opinions for a reason: it would appear to spring forth from just such an immature fountain). While many of your statistics are sadly correct, your reactionary impulse betrays an intellectual shortcoming about such a simple day as today.
No one is discussing England or monarchies or Queens or tea taxes. It is a simple as meeting with friends and family, heating food on an open fire, and blowing up gunpowder in impressive displays.
You place such value in the thoughts of high school students so I will end with this: a disturbing proportion of American high school students would not believe England isn’t a United State nor would be able to find it on a map. Does that prove anything of worth at all?
Your angry, misguided shot across the bow of the US’s Independence Day makes you look foolish and simple minded. Throw fewer, more well placed stones instead of this handful of cheap, sloppy mud.
I only comment because I expect more from this forum. I look forward to your improved work in the future.
July 5, 2009 at 12:36 am
petebrook
Thanks for the comment Brendan. Although, I know if I reeled that out mouth-dirt on your stoop you’d be laughing all the way to the bank. Not that you aren’t giggling to yourself already. But if I’m generalising with the term socialism, it’s because I only need to convince those that fear it (not those that know that socialism, in its truest sense, won’t ever come to the US). Socialism in its 20th century, European guise will never apply to contemporary US but perhaps a receptiveness to higher taxes directed at local services could work an angle into constituents thoughts?
July 5, 2009 at 1:43 am
petebrook
Nate. Thanks for keeping on my toes. Yours is the first comment on Prison Photography Blog that has directly challenged any position I’ve published. I am grateful for it.
It makes sense your criticism would come after I showed a bit of pub-argument-fare. I didn’t post this piece lightly and was well aware of the departure from my well-stifled reactionary self. I had two folks come over and edit it for me (you’ll be glad I omitted the comment on flags and caca).
If the post seems poorly written and edited then I take that as a legitimate critique and I thank you for saying, but what actually occurred here was my waylaying of researched minutiae to just say what I felt. Sometimes even the most respected bloggers need to drop their academic self for something closer to the heart (and bone). I make no apologies and I stand by the overall tone of the piece.
I don’t wish to downplay the importance of friends, family and coming together for food and merriment. Close loved ones are essential and like I said, I wish the US could enjoy more public holidays. Hell, close loved ones are the biggest determining factor in the success rate of former prisoners avoiding recidivist acts.
I’ll add I just saw the best fireworks display of my life down on Lake Union, Seattle. It was a treat.
While I took the consensus of British school pupils as a departure point, my intention was not to promote their position above others, but to pour doubt on the notion that America is a bastion of freedom emanating from a specific historical moment – a position I hope we all recognise as false and misguiding. It may be a cheap shot, but there does remain a significant portion of lazy Americans who fall back on empty patriotic rhetoric. I hope you’d agree the naming of the “Patriot Act” was one of the most cynical maneouvers of modern politics!
Gordon Brown in the UK has recently petitioned for a renewed national appreciation of what it is to be British and I pour the same scorn on that. Skeptical (overly so) I may be, but not foolish and misguided.
The fact you expect more of my commentary buoys me with pride and purpose, for often I have felt like my work was broadcasting to an abyss and an audience with no reflex.
As you mention, American high schoolers may have little knowledge of the UK, which supports my point that public education is missing key elements – namely geography. I have read in the past that surprisingly few college students can even identify Iraq and Afghanistan on maps which to me suggests an embedded apathy toward global and cultural curiosity.
I wrote the piece and in a decision (of possible petulance) threw up the wonderful Neely animations. They are incongruous to the tone of my piece, but they deliver the best of what I appreciate as the best of American product: humorous, brave, alternative and singular.
July 8, 2009 at 12:05 am
Brendan
Nate, should you return after finding this post lacking:
“It is a simple as meeting with friends and family, heating food on an open fire, and blowing up gunpowder in impressive displays.”
Nonsense … These things are nice, but reflecting on independence, freedom, the past, the present and the future are important. I’m sure that everyone collected here spends an unhealthy and inordinate number of hours doing so, but we would be a minority. Any little reminder for the general population is welcomed by me, even if most opportunity falls short [and ends] at some idle flag waving in between the hot dogs and the groundstars and Bud light.